Today we utilised the usb capabilities of our Belkin OmniView™ PRO2 KVM Switch. As I failed to find any references to exactly how this worked prior to actually testing it out I thought I'd post how it worked in case anyone else is wondering.
The switch has a single USB, VGA and two PS2 ports per device connected. We had always connected the mouse and keyboard via the two PS2 ports. As there was only a single USB port to handle both the mouse and the keyboard I wondered how this worked. The answer is simple (at least on a Windows XP PC we tested it on). When the PC was connected to the switch using a USB A-to-B cable it autodetected the switch's USB port as a dual mouse/keyboard port, installed the drivers required (no media required) and allowed the single USB cable to replace the dual PS2 cables.
The exact procedure we followed for a PC currently using 2 PS2 cables for mouse and keyboard was:
- Attach a USB A-to-B cable between PC and the switch. The drivers were automatically installed on the server without the need for external media. However, the mouse and keyboard did not work after the drivers had installed.
- Remove the USB A-to-B cable. The mouse and keyboard started working again.
- Shutdown the PC.
- Re-attach the USB A-to-B cable.
- Remove the PS2 mouse and keyboard cables.
- Re-boot the PC.
Note that you still need a VGA male/female cable (as you do with the PS2 cables).